Carrie Lam cannot end Hong Kong protests with her passive aggression

The PLA threat is real and looming. The city needs dialogue and leaders unafraid of being shouted down. Let Hong Kong’s chief executives, past, present and future, step forward now and do their duty by the city

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Chief Executive Carrie Lam attends the graduation ceremony for a PLA summer camp for Hong Kong youth at San Wai Barracks on July 28, the same day that protesters were driven from Beijing’s liaison office with tear gas, as Hong Kong continues a third weekend of violence. Photo: Hong Kong’s Information Services Department

Alice Wu

Alice Wu is a political consultant and a former associate director of the Asia Pacific Media Network at UCLA.

Published: 5:00pm, 4 Aug 2019Updated: 7:47pm, 4 Aug 2019

It is getting really ridiculous. Where is our Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor? More importantly, what has she been doing while Hong Kong burns in the inferno she lit the fuse on? The word from the grapevine is that Lam has been busy meeting people, which translates into meeting people she sees as more important than, say, everyday citizens like us who are fed up and in distress.

The Chief Executive’s Office still insists on releasing photographs of Lam’s “busy” meetings, which, unsurprisingly, makes the situation on the ground even worse. While people are battling the elements and tear gas, along with the hazards of other projectiles, while fireworks are shot into a crowd of protesters gathered in front of a police station, while people are making bombs, while university students, in this “revolution of our times”, take their vice-chancellors to task in ways reminiscent of a revolution in Mao Zedong’s time, while the city descends ever closer to the vestibule of hell in epic Dante style, devoured by the she-wolf (incontinence), the lion (violence) and the leopard (malice), Lam is dining and wining business leaders in the comfort of her official residence.

This is not the fighter that Lam was known to be. And this is no “nanny”, the sexist nickname bestowed upon her when she was the chief secretary, for her special talent in cleaning up other officials’ messes.

The new Lam has developed an affinity to playing hide-and-seek with the public. This is Lam being passive-aggressive, definitely a new style of governance for Hong Kong.

Chief Executive Carrie Lam hosted a lunch for business leaders at Government House on July 30, where she urged them to support the government’s handling of the massive protests that have rocked the city since early June. Photo: Hong Kong’s Information Services Department

Is passive aggression an appropriate response to the spiral of torment we cannot seem to escape? Probably not. It definitely is not the sort of response that would inject “hope” in our youths. And hope is key to curbing self-destructive behaviour and destructive acts.

But for those who thought the historic press conference last week by the State Council’s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office was anticlimactic, have no fear. Lam’s new passive-aggressive governance would surely bring about a whole new level of dysfunction.